Snowy Sochi Olympics: 16,000,000 cubic feet of snow stored for games

There should be no worries of a snowless Winter Olympic in Russia’s Sochi, as the organizers of the event made sure to stockpile 16 million cubic feet of snow for the competitions.

Though it has been a record warm winter for Moscow, the
organizers of the Sochi Olympics can guarantee that there will be
enough snow for the athletes in any weather at the Black sea
resort of Sochi in Russia.

There will be four different forms of technology used to ensure
snowy Olympics in 2014. First of all, eight vaults have been
storing snow for over a year under special blankets made from
isothermal fabric to keep it from defrosting. The containers are
located along the Olympic slopes of the Roza Khutor ski resort on
Aibgy Mountain, which will host the event.

Second, there are hundreds of snow cannons scattered around the
slopes. They use water from the mountain lakes to make artificial
snow.

In addition, a special kind of snow salt is being used as a kind
of glue for when and if the snow melts. And finally, mountain
gutters gather snow falling at the highest peaks and transport it
down to the slopes.

Of course technology is also being utilized by competitors going
for gold.

“We are trying to figure out which lubricants are going to
provide maximum acceleration in the Sochi snow so that later we
could share our findings with the services that are to prepare
the equipment for the Russian ski athletes at the Olympic
Games,” skier Aleksandr Schastnykh told RT’s Thabang Motsei.
For more, watch the report by RT’s Thabang Motsei.